Who Is Jared?

My name is Jared Way. I was born in California, and became an "adoptive" Minnesotan. Now I'm contentedly expatriated in South Korea.

For many years I was a database programmer, with a background in Linguistics and Spanish Literature.

I quit my well-paying job and starting in September, 2007, I spent 2 years teaching EFL to elementary kids in Ilsan (suburban Seoul), South Korea. From April, 2010, until April, 2011, I worked a public school position in rural southwestern Korea (Yeonggwang County). I have since returned to Ilsan and continue to work there.

As of June, 2013, I remain in Ilsan in South Korea, but I was diagnosed with cancer, and have been undergoing treatment. As a consequence, the focus and tone of this blog has changed somewhat.

I started this blog before I even had the idea of coming to Korea (first entry: Caveat: And lo...). So this is not meant to be a blog about Korea, by any stretch of the imagination. But life in Korea, and Korean language and culture, inevitably play a central role in this blog's current incarnation. Let's just say... it's a blog about whatever I happen to be thinking, that currently takes place in Korea.

Basically, this blog is a newsletter for the voices in my head. It keeps everyone on the same page: it has become a sort of aide-mémoire.

If you're curious about me, there is a great deal of me here. I believe in what I call "opaque transparency" - you can learn almost everything about me if you want, but it's not immediately easy to find.

A distillation of my personal philosophy (at least on good days):
I have made the realization that happiness is not a mental state. It is not something that is given to you, or that you find, or that you can lose, or that can be taken from you. Happiness is something that you do. And like most things that you do, it is volitional. You can choose to do happiness, or not. You have complete freedom with respect to the matter.

Geofiction - this has evolved into a significant "hobby" for me. I like to draw imaginary maps, and there is a website that has enabled this vice.

I worked as a volunteer administrator for the site OpenGeofiction on and off for a few years. I created (but no longer maintain) the site's main wiki page: OGF Wiki. I am not currently working as administrator but I remain active on the site.

The above work has required my becoming an expert in the Openstreetmap system. Openstreetmap is an attempt do for online maps what wikipedia has done for encyclopedias. I have considered becoming an openstreetmap contributor, but I feel that my current location in Korea hinders that, since I don't have a good grasp Korean cartographic naming conventions.

Starting in April, 2018, I decided somewhat capriciously to build my own "OGF stack" on my own server. This was not because I intended to abandon the OGF site, but rather because I wanted to better understand the whole architecture and all its parts. I built a wiki on the Mediawiki platform (the same as wikipedia). This wiki has no content. I built a map tileserver and geospatial database, which contains a very low resolution upload of an imaginary planet called Rahet. And I built a wordpress blog, which is a separate, low-frequency blog intended to focus on my geofictional pursuits rather than this more personalized, general purpose blog. All of these things can be found integrated together on my rent-a-server, here: geofictician.net

2018.08.12

Just for the sake of recording for posterity (as if that was necessary), I will show my move-out process from my storage unit in Eagan, Minnesota. After spending a week sorting out my stuff, dividing it into "keep", "throw away" and "maybe piles", the day of reckoning came. Last Friday, I had an appointment for the shipping container to arrive, when I could then send my stuff off to Alaska, where I'm moving.

I got all the stuff out of my storage unit, "staged" and ready to load. My friend Bob arrived to help me load. It was a very hot day.

When the truck came, about noon, they had the container on the back of the truck. The truck backed down the driveway of the storage place, but we still had about 25 yards across which we had to carry everything. So we got everything at the back of the truck.

We got it all loaded. The driver and his wife (they were a husband-wife trucking team, which are very common for long-haul truckers in the US), were extremely friendly and helpful. I felt very lucky. They helped us load and gave us good pointers on how to secure stuff too.

So we closed up the truck and sent my stuff on its way. It will arrive in Alaska before I do. The container will have to sit and wait for me on the dock in Craig.

Yesterday (Saturday), I went back and paid some junk guys to come and take away all the "throw away" stuff from my storage unit. They were very efficient and did a great, fast job cleaning everything out.

Then I told the office at the storage place that my unit was empty. They inspected it and pronounced it clean.

And now, after 20 years, I have finally managed to get all my possessions out of storage. I feel like a great burden has been lifted from me.

Today I flew out from Minneapolis back to Portland, and I'm back with Arthur, Juli and Keith. I'm very sore from moving all the boxes, and sleepy from taking such an early flight.

Here are some volcanoes I saw from my airplane window as we landed at Portland.

They are, from left to right: St Helens, Rainier (farthest away), Adams.

2018.08.11

I had a lot going on today. Busy. Clearing out the storage space, then spending some quality time interacting with my good friend Bob, his parents, and his two sons. It was a good day. But I didn't leave myself much time to work on a blog post, and I'm still exhausted from yesterday's loading party. So I'll keep this short, and give a more substantive update when I get back to Portland, tomorrow.

2018.08.10

My friend Bob and I loaded my stuff into the Alaska-bound container today. I took some pictures, and was thinking to write about the experience in detail, but I'm very tired. So maybe tomorrow I'll give more details.

2018.08.09

I drove out to White Bear Lake this evening. That's where my best friend Bob's parents live - where David, who is Bob's dad, grew up. Bob has Minnesota roots.

Bob and his two sons drove up from Wisconsin (near Madison) today. I will be staying with Bob in White Bear Lake for the rest of my stay in Minnesota, because Mark and Amy are hosting a big family reunion type event in their house, so I wanted to not be in the way for that. It does mean a bit more of a commute to my storage unit, which is in Eagan just a few miles from Mark and Amy's while it's about 30-45 minutes' drive from White Bear. But it's OK. And I'm happy to see Bob, his parents, and his sons. They are my midwestern family, in many respects. I met Bob my first day of my first year of college, and we've been best friends all these long years.

When I drove out to White Bear Lake, I was just a bit early, and so I waited for Bob to call me and let me know where to go. I stopped next to the lake that gives the town its name. I took this picture of the boats and the summery lake.